The MapScaping Podcast - GIS, Geospatial, Remote Sensing, earth observation and digital geography
A podcast for geospatial people. Weekly episodes that focus on the tech, trends, tools, and stories from the geospatial world. Interviews with the people that are shaping the future of GIS, geospatial as well as practitioners working in the geo industry. This is a podcast for the GIS and geospatial community subscribe or visit https://mapscaping.com to learn more
Episodes
What if communities could map their own worlds using low-cost drones and open AI models instead of waiting for expensive satellite imagery?
In this episode with Leen from HOT (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team), we explore how they're putting open mapping tools directly into...
This conversation with Jed Sundwall, Executive Director of Radiant Earth, starts with a simple but crucial distinction: the difference between data and data products. And that distinction matters more than you might think.
We dig into why so many open data portals feel like someone just threw up a bu...
Reflections from the FOSS4G 2025 conference
Processing, Analysis, and Infrastructure (FOSS4G is Critical Infrastructure)
The high volume of talks on extracting meaning from geospatial data—including Python workflows, data pipelines, and automation at scale—reinforced the idea that FOSS4G represents critical infrastructure.
- AI Dominance: AI took up a lot of space at the conference. I was particularly interested in practical,...
Karl returns to the Mapscaping podcast to discuss his latest venture, Tyche Insights - a platform aimed at building a global community of geospatial storytellers working with open data.
In this conversation, we explore the evolution from his previous company, Building Footprint USA (acquired by Lightbox), to this new mission of democratizing public data storytelling.
Karl walks us through the challenges and opportunities of open da...
Solo Episode Reflection: I'm back behind the mic after about a year-long break. Producing this podcast takes more time than you might imagine, and I was pretty burnt out. The last year brought some major life events, including moving my family back to New Zealand from Denmark, dealing with depression, burying my father, starting a new business with my wife, and having a teenage daughter in the ho...
Jonathan Wagner, CEO of Scribble Maps, is back on the podcast, and this time we're talking about Scribble—an AI agent he's built into his platform. Not a chatbot, an agent. There's a difference, and we get into that.
https://mapscaping.com/podcast/the-business-of-web-maps/
So far, Scribble has access to 140 tools. It can view your map, select tools, build plugins, fetch data, and handle onboarding and customer education.
But h...
Exploring the Evolution and Impact of Mapillary with Ed from Meta.
Topics include Ed's journey with Mapillary, the process of uploading and utilizing street-level imagery, and the integration with OpenStreetMap.
Ed talks about the challenges of mapping with various devices, the role of community contributions, and future potentials in mapping technology, such as using neural radiance fields (NeRFs) for creating immersive 3D scenes...
Telematics Data is Reshaping Our Understanding of Road Networks
In this episode MIT Professor Hari Balakrishnan explains how Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT) is transforming traditional road network analysis by layering dynamic behavioural data onto static map geometries.
Telematics data creates "living maps" that go beyond traditional road geometry and attributes. By collecting movement data from 45 million users through phones ...
In this week’s episode, I’m thrilled to welcome back Ariel Seidman, founder of HiveMapper. Ariel was my very first podcast guest back in 2019, and HiveMapper has come a long way since then!
We explore how HiveMapper has evolved from a drone-based mapping system to a cutting-edge platform collecting street-level data at a global scale. Ariel shares the challenges of scaling large-scale mapping efforts, the pivot to building their ow...
Tracking elephants in Southern Africa’s Kavango-Zambezi (KAZA) region, the largest transfrontier conservation area in the world.
Lead scientist Robin Naidoo from the World Wildlife Fund-US explains the complex, cross-border collaboration required to understand elephant movements across vast landscapes and the role of GNSS.
Connected with Robin
https://www.worldwildlife.org/experts/robin-naidoo
Read more information about this ...
Today's episode touches on some pretty big topics like Imposter Syndrome, Mentorship, Career Progression, Adaptability and Diversity
Today you are going to hear two stories from two very different voices. Two brilliant people who happen to be women in geospatial.
Ta Taneka
In this episode, Marco Bernasconi, co-founder and CEO of OPENGIS.ch, introduces us to QField, an open-source mobile application designed for field data collection in conjunction with QGIS.
Marco shares his journey in developing QField and discusses its seamless integration with QGIS, allowing users to capture, survey, and manage geospatial data on various mobile devices.
We also discuss the technical aspects of QField, including it...
This is the story of Priscilla Cole, and what she did when she discovered that her ambitions were bigger than the tools she was using!
Connect with Priscilla here!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/priscilla-cole-5892549/
Recommended Listening
The Way You Talk About Your Skills Is Costing You Money
Geospatial Consulting As A Business And Career
Getting Where You Want To Go In Your Career
In this episode, I'm joined by Konstantine Klemmer, a researcher at Microsoft, to dive deep into the fascinating world of GeoAI. Konstantine introduces us to Satclip, a cutting-edge model that encodes geographic locations based on satellite images.
We discuss how Satclip works, the data it uses, and its potential applications, particularly in low-resource settings and predictive modeling. Whether you're into AI, geography, or just ...
In this episode, I welcome Jason Gilman, a Principal Software Engineer at Element 84, to explore the exciting world of natural language geocoding.
Key Topics Discussed:
-
Introduction to Natural Language Geocoding:
- Jason explains the concept of natural language geocoding and its significance in converting textual descriptions of locations into precise geographical data. This involves using large language models to interpret ...
This podcast episode is all about semantic search and using embeddings to analyse text and social media data.
Dominik Weckmüller, a researcher at the Technical University of Dresden, talks about his PhD research, where he looks at how to analyze text with geographic references.
He explains hyperloglog and embeddings, showing how these methods capture the meaning of text and can be used to search big databases without knowing the t...
In this episode, we welcome back Lauren Guy, CEO and founder of ASTERRA, a groundbreaking company using L band and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for commercial purposes. Lauren shares his journey as a geophysicist and discusses the innovative applications of L band in detecting water leakages, soil moisture, and even minerals from space. Dive deep into the technical, commercial, and environmental aspects of SAR technology and lear...
Cloud-native geospatial, range requests, chucks, COGs and COPCs ... [ insert confusing acronym here ]
Sometimes It feels like we need to learn a whole new vocabulary and if you have been doing #geo for a while you might be wondering how much of this is actually going to impact me. What bits of this are the ones that I need to know about?
I don’t think that anyone is going to be talking about cloud native in 10 years, in the same ...
Mappedin started as a school project and evolved into a leading indoor mapping company, working with malls, airports, hospitals, and Fortune 500 companies.
You guessed, today's podcast is all about indoor mapping, why it's hard, what are the use cases driving it, what the state of the art looks like today and what we can expect in the future.
Key points discussed include:
1. **The Challenge of Indoor Mapping**: Unlike outdoor m...
Hugo Powell, from immap.org shares his expert insights on how GIS technologies are leveraged to analyze data, visualize scenarios, and facilitate rapid decision-making during emergencies.
Here are the key tools mentioned:
1. **Kobo Toolbox**: An open-source tool used for data collection in humanitarian contexts. Kobo Toolbox allows for both quantitative and qualitative data collection and is operational offline, which is crucial in...
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